Tech

YouTube is launching new subscription services for music and video to challenge Spotify and Netflix and attract more paying users. The new ad-free $12 (£9) video service will be called YouTube Premium, replacing Google’s YouTube Red, and will include a music streaming service called YouTube Music. The service will come without advertising …

The Vatican has told nuns to limit time spent poring over social media so they are no longer distracted by “noises, news and words”. A legislative document, published by Rome’s office for religious life, highlights concerns that social media “in all the variety in which it is presented today”, is taking …

Enlarge / Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) speaks to reporters at the U.S. Capitol January 18, 2018 in Washington, DC. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) has sent a new letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions asking for more information about stingrays, also known as cell-site simulators. As Ars has reported for years, stingrays …

A look inside the Xbox Inclusive Tech Lab as they reveal their new controller with improved accessibility. (Captions available.) REDMOND, Washington—The Xbox Adaptive Controller (XAC), slated to launch “later this year,” looks almost incomplete at first glance. The clean, confusing-looking slab, nearly the length and width of an Xbox One …

Are you worried what companies are doing to make money from your personal data and who is getting their hands on it? Amid the panic about Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, imagine if the data was not ‘likes’ and survey results, but your most intimate biological particulars – the details of …

Lenovo IdeaPad 330 Intel’s transition to building processors on a 10nm manufacturing process has been delayed repeatedly. Once upon a time the company said that it’d go into mass production at the end of 2015; with its most recent financial results the company pushed that back, again, to 2019. But …

The past three days have highlighted the potential perils that can threaten people who rely on desktop computers to send encrypted messages. The events—which involve encrypted email and the desktop versions of the Signal and Telegram messaging programs—should in no way discourage people from using encryption. They do, however, provide …

At Ars Live #22, Neil Tsutsui tells Annalee Newitz about the secret lives of ants. Videography by Chris Schodt, produced by Justin Wolfson. At Ars Technica Live this month, we had the pleasure of talking to ecologist Neil Tsutsui, who runs the Tsutsui Lab at UC Berkeley, where researchers study …

Enlarge / Sen. Ted Cruz, right, and Sen. Bill Nelson (background) both support extending ISS operations beyond 2025. At one point on Wednesday afternoon, US Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) turned to his counterpart from Florida, Democrat Bill Nelson, and spoke of their mutual preference for continuing federal funding for the International Space …

Enlarge / Usernames, passwords, emails, and phone numbers of thousands of users of a system designed to investigate prisoners’ phone calls were allegedly exposed in a hack, details leaked to Motherboard suggest. Securus Technologies Securus Technologies—the company that provides a geolocation service used for cell phone tracking by law enforcement …